A friend in deed and need

Dear Dr K,

This friendship day came and went and I didn’t receive a single friendship band from anyone, nor did I receive any Facebook friend requests (in fact some people unfriended me). I didn’t get any wishes and my friendship day was actually rather unfriendly. What can I do so I don’t have such a dismal friendship day next year?

N E Mee

Dear Mee,

In order to have a successful and satisfying friendship day, you can’t just sit around waiting for friendship to happen to you. You need to get out there and make friendship with people. But Dr K, I hear you asking, what is friendship, really? How do I make it? Without knowing the answer to these questions it is highly unlikely that you will have a successful friendship day. So let us first understand the deeper aspects of friendship so that your next friendship day is not so harrowing.

1. Friendship is a ship that never sinks: You might have heard some of your friends uttering this pithy statement, full of wisdom and heavy metaphor and wordplay. But since you don’t have friends, I will assume you know nothing about this. The reason that people say friendship never sinks is because it is built of lightweight and buoyant materials like hugs and high-fives. However, having myself seen a friendship sink, I should warn you that while friendships are usually unsinkable, like the Titanic, an unexpected iceberg could appear out of nowhere and sink it. One of the first things you need to do to make a new friendship is to break the ice. However, I should warn you that sometimes the ice holds a grudge and comes back to end the friendship.

2. A friend in need is a friend in deed: For a long time I remained confused about whether a friend in need was a friend ‘in deed’ or ‘indeed’. I always had several friends in need of money, shoes, advice, bananas, and I wondered if they were indeed my friends simply by virtue of their neediness. I asked my lawyer about this and he clarified that the aphorism was not about friends ‘indeed’, but friends ‘in deed’. He also said that the need referred not to the need of my friends but my own need. Basically, if I was in need of something, the only friends who would come to my aid would be those who had signed a deed attesting that they were my friends. Since I had no such ‘friends in deed’ at the time, I asked my lawyer to draw up the necessary paperwork. Now I have several friends in deed and they all hate me because they find that I’m always in need of juice or head massages or Polyball teammates. They can’t refuse, since I got them to sign papers attesting to the fact that they are my friends.

Thus, in order to have friends in deed of your own, get unsuspecting people to sign paperwork making them your best friends forever, whether they like you or not. Friendship bands and Facebook friend requests are less formal versions of this, but I would advise you to take the proper legal route, as friendship bands can be removed, Facebook friends can be unfriended, but if your friend has signed a contract agreeing to be your friend for a stipulated amount of time (I suggest you go with the lifetime friendship clause), they can never turn you down.

I hope that with these nuggets of wisdom you are able to go forth and make many new friendships.

You don’t even have to wait till the next friendship day to get started.

Yours questionably,

 Dr K